21 Responses to US Being Held Hostage By A Few Large Cities

Well, that and the GOP running left-of-center old farts because “It’s his turn!”. Seriously, McCain’s name was actually on a bill that attempted to subvert the 1st Amendment. I wouldn’t vote for him if he was running against Joe Stalin.

There’s something very wrong with this picture, that a clear minority in terms of geographic space is totally dominating (as 2008) the rest of the country. Yes, it’s as if the rest of the country is being held hostage by the big and dirty urban centers. This isn’t right.
It’s time to rework the way we do things, so this doesn’t happen anymore. What to do? Not sure, but something.

Why do you think the democrats are steadily pushing land use reforms and zoning laws ? It’s to consolidate the people into zones and regulate them . Yes , I do think the republicans are pushing the same agenda whether they know it or not. They want big wildlife corridors and no roads instead of opening up the land to more small farms and a healthy lifestyle.

How do we reverse this? I’m not sure we can. People stood by while welfare and government handouts ran rampant. Personally, I’m for the Atlas Shrugged solution–move all the companies out of the country (which would mean we should elect Romney because he has experience 🙂 )
and let the takers see what happens when there’s no one to take from. Yeah, that’s harsh and will cause a mess, but at least half of this country voted for a man who’s philosophy is the government is responsible for your success. Since this is a representative democracy, when the takers outnumber the producers, leaving is pretty much the only option.

Steven, I thought you might find a reply from one of my more liberal (socialist) friends rather interesting, and perhaps you would have a rebuttal? I found it rather ridiculous, you might too.

Let me explain…

… data manipulation is not just using false data, although that is one form it takes. It can also be graphically representing data in a graphic form that is irrelevant or misleading then further using the graphic to prove a hypothesis, in this case the hypothesis is not proved.

Data manipulation can further be the leaving out of data that do not support or even disprove the hypothesis. It is in these two ways that I accuse Steven Goddard of data manipulation. The data isn’t false, it is misrepresented to prove his hypothesis and thus it is his conclusion that is not proved.

The first time I saw him do this was in an article he did on how he disproved the decrease of ice density claimed by climatologists around the world.

He took a 2-D top down photo of ice and apparently counted the pixels to prove this. The problem wasn’t that the photos were false, it was that Ice density is defined as the concentration of ice per unit volume, thus

1) ice density can not be properly represented in 2 dimensions because

2) it leaves out data, two dimensions to be exact, the height of the ice, a 1’ high ice is different than 10,000’ high ice; and the density, the mass contained in the volume is different for each area is left out altogether.

While it was an interesting way to look at the issue and possibly had value, it in no way proved his hypothesis that Ice density wasn’t decreasing.

As to the election graphic, to show election results via counties is misrepresenting it graphically. First, counties are irrelevant since presidential elections are determined by State. USA Today also has the state graphic in the article you linked and that paints a very different picture.

The problem with both is that neither correctly show how many people voted either way. It is a “winner take all” graphic. The counties that are shown as republican were not all won by overwhelming margins but the graphic looks as though they were.

Second it leaves out data, most importantly the population associated each area and coloring all voting instead of breaking it up into winner takes all areas. Here is an interesting article about the subject of a color map representation of elections from a study at Princeton:

Further Goodard takes this graphic and extrapolates to say that a few large cities “who depend on welfare” hold the rest of the country hostage. I don’t see any data on how the welfare distribution falls by county, or what might be even more correct… how it distributes as a function of the taxes generated.

The Princeton article also uses the USA graphic. So in conclusion I am not saying the graphic is incorrect, I am saying it isn’t a good representation of the data and that Goodard’s claim is not backed up with data. It is merely an unfounded claim he makes with no data.

Actually, it is a she, but I will do that. I am also interested to know. The only thing I can think is that she is confusing ice extent with ice density. I find it very difficult to believe that you would ever make the mistake of using a 2D data set and argue anything about ice density. This just doesn’t make logical sense, and I have found your postings to be nothing less than logical.

Yeah, I didn’t think so either .. I think she is just reaching .. another of those that don’t like facts thrown in their face. They would rather bathe in their own delusion.

I appreciate the responses however! … I love your blog as I read it daily. The years reading this blog have certainly opened my eyes, and I can’t thank you enough for continuing to maintain and contribute to this site they way you do. It is invaluable!

Well, I wouldn’t say mentally deficient and/or coward. She is quite intellectual and was engaged heavily in nano research for many years. I would say delusional however. She is a very nice gal, and has a very nice family. They are however, about as close as you can come to devout socialists. They live in North Dakota (Fargo) where they live in a social bubble. North Dakota has a 3.2% unemployment rate, is a very conservative state (which makes it even more remarkable her social/political views), and never really sees a recession (very diverse industries). I lived there for over 25 years myself, but what I find interesting is, my time living there showed me how conservatism, constitutionalism and self reliance is perhaps the best social structure on Earth. You would be hard pressed to find a place that can demonstrate this as well as the state of North Dakota. This makes her social/political views even more surprising to me as she has lived there almost her entire life.

I am awaiting her reply to Steve’s comment.

Just as an aside, I also fight this same battle with my father (very frustrating). He is an MIT honor grad with 35 years (now retired) working in a research think tank at Battelle Northwest Research Laboratories. He has led his life as an oober conservative (subscribes to the Tightwad Gazette of all things), he is very successful financially (based upon conservative principals for sure) but has become very “progressive” and a devout Democrat. I argue mostly climate topics with him, but I am just astounded at the things he will say and the factual data that he will ignore on the subject (ignores most anything I present to him, regardless of the source). I have pounded him into the ground in every debate, and he still acts as if his stance reigns supreme. I recently read an article about this sort of behavior (I will try to find again and perhaps post here) that I found very interesting and quite telling. I suspect the article is rather accurate in this matter as I am seeing this sort of behavior demonstrated a lot lately.